Bluffing poor consumers

It is now proven beyond doubt that consumers are at the mercy of businesses, big or small. Lately, some corporate houses involved in the trading of major essential food items have become unusually dominant. They dictate the market prices of rice, sugar, edible oils and many more items. In such a situation, consumers are confused about the role of the ministries of food and commerce. These ministries are supposed to protect the interests of the consumers, but they feign to be helpless in the face of pressure coming from corporates. Suspicion is running high among the consumers that the relevant ministries are least interested in putting a leash on the traders out to fleece them.

Cartels controlling the prices of specific food items have emerged in recent years. The commerce ministry, because of the continuous spike in prices of many essential commodities for the past few months, on some occasions in the recent past fixed the prices of cooking oils and sugar. Usually, the refiners and big importers of edible oils and sugar send proposals to the commerce ministry with a request to hike the prices of these two items while citing the reasons.

But the entire exercise involving the price revision is misleading and aimed at hoodwinking poor consumers. No food item is sold by traders at government-fixed prices. The consumers have to pay far more than the fixed rates. Besides, every time the prices either of edible oils or sugar go up at the retailers' level before proposals reach the ministry. The refiners and large importers allegedly have a hand in such a hike.

A case in point is the prevailing prices of sugar. The government, in response to a request from the Bangladesh Sugar Refiners Association (BSRA), had raised the prices of loose sugar to Tk 104 and packet sugar to Tk 109 only recently.  Until last week, the consumers were required to pay Tk 118 and Tk 130 for a kg of loose sugar and packet sugar respectively. With the BSRA submitting a fresh proposal to increase the prices of sugar between Tk21 and Tk 26 in one go, the sweetener has already become costlier than the hike proposed by the BSRA on the eve of the Eid festival.

No denying the fact that international prices of sugar have gone up notably -- around USD 60-70 per tonne--- this month over the prices of the item during the January-March period. Yet the international price increase should not prompt the sugar refiners to go for an immediate hike in the prices of the item. Sugar now in their stock was imported at previous market rates. So, they should not punish the consumers by hiking the prices of the commodity.

 Consumers and rights groups have raised the issue of unreasonable price hikes by traders time and again but to no avail. What they want is that the traders to behave rationally and fairly while pricing their commodities. The traders here have the propensity to raise prices of imported items almost instantly in the local market if those become costlier in the international market. But they remain nonreactive if the opposite happens. Their explanation is: how can we lower the prices of the items if international prices are high?

The problem is that the government agencies dealing with price issues are too meek and weak to take appropriate and justified actions against errant businesses. Those often take action against small and medium-scale businesses, but consciously overlook the crimes committed by the biggies. What the competition commission has been doing since its inception remains unclear to the consumers. All these entities are designed to safeguard the interests of the consumers. Those need to work seriously to attain that goal.

Zahidmar10@gmail.com